


Winter Skin

by ladyface



Category: In the Bleak Midwinter (Webcomic)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29164119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyface/pseuds/ladyface
Summary: A collection of drabbles for In the Bleak Midwinter. I'm mostly posting this for myself. I may put art with some of them. I will update tags and warnings and pairings and characters as I go. It's all new territory for me. Please enjoy!All characters belong to Kat / Ali. Please go read In the Bleak Midwinter; on Webtoon.
Relationships: Anya/Omega, Omega/Anya
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	1. Enough

I love you.

The words seem to slip out of her mouth and fall, fluttering, hopeful and desperate.  
Both of their eyes are trained on the ground between their feet, where the words now lay, exposed.

She looks at his shoes and thinks about his fingers tying the laces. The graceful movement and the same fingers that have grazed her chin with such a firm gentleness. She closes her eyes. They should be standing closer together. There’s too much room for unspoken things between them.

I know, he finally says. But it’s not enough.


	2. Thoughts From a Man Denying His Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Omega spends some time in the room Anya will occupy.

He did not often come to this house. His days and nights were usually spent in the cold interior of their base. It felt less... less human there, and perhaps that was why Delta preferred it. Because walking through these halls brought back memories of a distant childhood, long buried under the rubble and destruction of war. Because he sometimes found himself homesick for that time, yet he wasn’t even sure if it existed in the way that he remembered it.

He passed by the door once. Instead, walked briskly to the room that was his. Stood restlessly in it, pacing back and forth, clenching his hands into fists. He left, passing by the room again. By the third time, he knew he was being pathetic. He faced the door and entered.

It looked... lifeless. Unbearably unlike her. Of course, he would never be able to forget the image of her lying on the floor, a halo of blood surrounding her hair splayed out like pale straw. The sight of her broken body, so far from of his reach; that would never leave either. But so much more than both of those, the sight of her that stuck with him the most, the one that settled in his being, took up residency in his bones, the thing that he would always fight to keep, was the sight of her alive. Blazing in all her glory, forever slipping through his fingers like water from sand. Flashing green eyes hiding an entire world inside, tears burning silver tracks down her cheeks, expressions he couldn’t and wouldn’t remove from his memory even if he had the chance. For someone so achingly familiar with the bondage of death, Anya reeked of life. Of freedom. She was a bird in flight, soaring so far above anything he’d ever dreamed of from his life on the ground.

He glanced at the bed and scoffed. What was a soft mattress compared to the privilege of flight? Compared to being alive, out there, with more choices than being alive, in this house and in this room? What was luxury in the face of captivity?

If this was what being bound to him meant, he hated it. Hated himself all the more for it. How could he take that light from the world just to hide it in here? He was selfish and jealous, there was no denying that... but how could he call her his in the first place? How could he be jealous of what he did not have any claim over? How could a creature like him ever clip the wings of a being like her? He could pretend the numbers on his wrist meant something, but he knew they were wrong. He had no soul to wrap hers in. His darkness had nothing to offer for her light, and without it, he was nothing anyway.

He left the room in disgust, adjusting the box of tissues on his way out, thinking of the tears that they might be used on. He shut his eyes as he shut the door, leaning back against it and wondering how any of this made sense.


	3. At last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just saw a quote earlier today and ran with it.
> 
> "Soulmates are old lovers felt by young hearts."  
> -unknown

She thinks about soulmates a lot, as she wanders around the house, brushing her fingers over all of the surfaces, passing through the empty halls feeling lifeless and uneasy. 

It’s been three weeks.

Her mother always said she would _know_. Every day since that conversation until the day she went into Dreamscape, she wondered _how_ she would know. Would it feel like a puzzle piece slipping into place? Would it reverberate through her body that _this_ , this person, whoever they were, was everything she never knew she missed? How would she know? And always, the nagging question, even though her mother pinched her nose and told her not to worry, _what if she missed them?_

What if she missed them. She never would have guessed that they would be the only ones alive in the room. That they would meet at the end of the world, only once everything she knew had passed away. She never once imagined that they would meet with such a chaotic backdrop to greet them. Regardless of either of those things, she should have never worried about missing him in a crowd of people anyway... because the moment she saw him, past the end of the gun in her face, she _knew_. Inexplicably, the way her mother could have never explained it anyway. It _did_ reverberate through her very being, like her whole life had been rotating around that one point in time. It was like her heart had known him before. Like her soul had been knit together with his when the earth was still dark and deep water poured over unformed land. Like nothing could ever separate what God himself had put together.

And then she died. Or rather, her soulmate killed her.

She wonders if he knew then. Part of her, now, thinks he did not. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about it ( _yet,_ she tries to tell herself) but the more she ponders it, the more she believes that he had shut off that side of himself completely. Perhaps that was what he actually wanted to talk about with her, that day she woke up for the third time, in someone else’s forgotten childhood home. She didn’t realize until later, but it occurred to her that he must have picked up her broken body, smeared x’s on his wrist (for maybe the millionth time), carried her to a flat spot, and laid her out on his jacket. She wonders if he was gentle about it. She believes he was, because he’s only ever been tender and unguarded with her since then. She wonders how long he would have sat there, waiting for her to wake up. What if she hadn’t? What would he have done then? 

But she did, and they argued, and she had never felt more alive than in those moments. With his dark eyes boring into her, his low and calm voice questioning her, testing her, making her question him... all of it felt absolutely right. The only thing that hadn’t felt right was shooting him. _That_ felt like ripping her heart out of her body and holding it in the palm of her hand, feeble beating, hole in her chest, until it froze in the bleak winter air. It would have felt wrong no matter who he was, but _because_ of who he was, it felt even worse. She knew she needed to do it, anyway. She needed to get back to her people, the ones she had grown to care for. Because even if he felt like the only answer to every question she didn’t know she had, the two of them and the shape they made together did not fit in the world she had woken up to. 

The universe was funny like that.

She thinks about soulmates a lot. The feeling she got when she first saw him never leaves, now that she knows it. She wonders if she knew him before. Before this wretched life. She wonders if their souls constantly find each other time and time again in different lives. If they are one old soul, wrenched apart and dropped in two young bodies, thrown against the waves of time over and over. She questions whether or not it’s ever been easy for them. Do they always meet forty to fifty years into their lives? Have they ever met as children, able to grow and live and love together in a world that accepts them? Were they ever able to live unburdened, to enjoy each other, to knit themselves back together the way she wishes they could in this life? _Will_ they ever? 

She looks at the numbers on her wrist, her one consolation, rubs her thumb over them, and thinks about soulmates. About her conversation with Ivan. She considers whether or not he is lucky for having a whole soul to give to someone, where she only has one ragged half. How unfair it would be to give him a divided heart if he offered her a complete one. How she isn’t sure if she could ever feel right in an unbalanced relationship like that. She thinks about her mother. The way she had lived like that, and the way their father blamed her for it eventually. 

When she gets too far down that hole, she seeks out the one person available to her, who might be able to understand where she’s coming from in all of this. Delta. He too, is half of a whole. A different kind, but still similar enough. Enough for Anya to find comfort in conversations with him about the dynamic. 

His perspective is interesting. She never would have thought that he gave much credence to soulmates, until he compared it to his relationship with his twin sister. It was then that it occurred to Anya that not all halves of the same thing had to be linked romantically. 

So she thinks about that. What it would be like to live with Omega by her side as a platonic companion rather than a lover. If she could find someone who would understand the connection they had. But the more she reasons through it, the more she realizes that she doesn’t quite have the room in her heart for that. When she loves, she loves entirely. She loves with her whole being, and an amorous relationship with a soulmate is something she thinks should be explored and cherished. Especially when their souls are already so intimately linked, as she knows in her core. She can’t picture leaving their relationship at platonic, because that _does not feel right._ There would be no other suitable companion for her anywhere on the earth, because ‘this at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.’

Eventually, she stops thinking about soulmates, because she’s cried every tear she has in her body out, and she’s tired of being listless. She doesn’t have time anymore to think about anything else. She sets her shoulders. Thinks of Ivan’s encouragement. _You got this freckles._ Of Omega’s silent strength pouring into her when he told her to _go._  


She decides instead, to think of vengeance.

They find them one week later and she curses herself for not thinking of vengeance sooner, because they are both so broken, her heart shatters all over again. He isn’t even awake to know that she’s there, and she realizes the parallel of gently wrapping him up to carry him somewhere and wait for him to wake up so that they can finally talk. 

But then she thinks about the way the wraith said that Omega would die from the shards left in his body and she wishes she could transfer them all into her own skin and take the pain away from him. Ivan must see the look in her eyes because he mumbles, almost regretfully, wistfully, as he spits out blood and shards of teeth, that he knows how to fix him. The irony of _him_ knowing how to knit her soul back together, and being willing to do it because his whole soul loves her half of one. She cries again then. 

But they fix him. They put him back together. And Anya thinks about soulmates once more, as he finally opens his eyes again and finds hers looking back at him. She knows he feels it then. The same reverberation she felt the foremost time she laid eyes on him, because he has the same look on his face that he had when she came back to life the first time. That look that says shock and wonder, but most of all, _home_. Home at last. 


	4. Once. Now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya and Omega spend some time together and Omega is able to stop thinking for a bit.

Once in a while, he stops thinking. Once in a while, he’s able to close his eyes and just... be.

No constant monologue of thoughts running, cataloguing, judging, sensing, endless endless processes. Just him.

And now her.

It’s been a very long time since he was able to shut off that most integral part of himself. A very long time since he even wanted to. Since he felt safe enough to. Yet here, laying next to her, staring into her eyes, there is no where else he wants to be. His mind is not better than this. He’s not sure anything is.

They run their hands over each other, unwrapping themselves to find places that aren’t even all that private. The backs of her knees, freckled, he is pleased to find. The curve of her shoulder blades under her thin shirt. The shell of his ear, her fingers lingering on the soft skin of his earlobe, rolling it in between her thumb and forefinger. Then she comes upon the crook of his elbow, while he discovers the shadow in between her delicate collar bones, only to run his fingers up the column of her neck, just under her jawline, to where he can see her pulse jumping a little faster than normal. He smiles slightly to himself and she blushes, but doesn’t look away, threading her hand through his hair and down his scalp.

They are slow. Gentle. Something he’s never really been.

She is lying so close, close enough for him to feel every pull of her slight muscles, the wrinkles in her borrowed clothes, the movement of her arm when she shifts to trace his brow line, her soulmate mark glowing faintly in front of his eyes. He stirs to brush his lips against it, ever so slightly, as if to trace her wrist and numbers on them with the breath he doesn’t have. Her mouth parts slightly, air pushing out from between her perfect lips, fluttering over his eyelashes.

He takes in the colors of her eyes, as his fingers travel down her arm. An entire forest of green, he notes, his nails dragging over her shoulder. An ocean of blues and seagrass that he takes in, gliding his palm around her elbow. Then his mind trips back to life, and he wonders, as he skates the pad of his thumb over her soft knuckles, if his hands feel icy, or calloused, or hardened from all the horrible things he’s done, or- she slots her fingers into his. He knows then that it doesn’t matter. Their hands must have been made for this.


End file.
